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The mighty minnow that took on a Japanese fleet

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When HMAS Yarra engaged a Japanese fleet, only 13 crew survived. Stathi Paxinos talks to one of them.

It was a shock no Australian seaman wanted. Leading signalman Geoff Bromilow attended his post on HMAS Yarra on March 4, 1942 half expecting the ship's alarm to be a drill.

His skipper, Lieutenant-Commander Robert Rankin, handed him a pair of binoculars and what he saw chilled him. What happened next was an act of collective bravery and selflessness.

Chris Hirchfield said we were fortunate we had come to talk to her father yesterday. She said she had spent decades piecing together information about Mr Bromilow's wartime experiences but could only glean snippets of information from her mother because her father refused to talk.

But Mr Bromilow, now 86, had within the past few years finally come to speak openly about what happened to the 151 crewmen on HMAS Yarra.

"I suppose time eradicates most pain, doesn't it?" he said yesterday.

However, Mr Bromilow, who lives in Kilmore, still rarely looks at a scrapbook that his daughter has compiled from old photographs, memorabilia and newspaper articles about the Yarra. There was just too great a mix of emotions for him.

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The story of the Yarra, which was sunk a few days after the HMAS Perth was lost with more than 300 men, is not widely known. Yet it involved an act that, Australian War Memorial historian Daniel Oakman wrote, was "widely regarded as one of the bravest acts in Australian naval history".

In recent years, there has been some recognition with the opening of a memorial in Melbourne and the naming of a Collins class submarine after the Yarra's skipper.

Mr Bromilow, a leading signalman, had been posted to the Yarra in 1939. The lightly armoured sloop was escorting a convey of three ships to Fremantle through the Indian Ocean.

Mr Bromilow had just finished his watch on March 4, 1942 and was bedding down on the flag deck when at dawn he heard some raised voices coming from the bridge followed by the action stations alarm. He went to his station on the bridge. The top masts of a fleet of Japanese cruisers and destroyers had been spotted over the horizon.

The crew would have known the Yarra was no match for the fleet of three cruisers, which each had 10 eight-inch guns, and two destroyers. However, Commander Rankin ordered the convoy to scatter and turned the Yarra to engage the enemy.

Mr Bromilow said the Yarra had not travelled far when shells started hitting it. The order was given to abandon ship and the bridge, where Mr Bromilow had just left his post, was hit, killing Commander Rankin and all his officers.

The HMAS Yarra, top, and some of the crew on deck.

"I got about two paces and then, bang, a direct hit on the bridge," Mr Bromilow, who suffered 42 shrapnel wounds to his back, said. "I finished up in the water with more holes in me than I had before."

Acting leading seaman Ronald Taylor ignored the abandon ship order and continued to operate a mounted gun as the boat sank.

However, Mr Bromilow and 33 others found their way onto two life rafts. It was more than five days before a Dutch submarine rescued the men. There were only 13 survivors. The others had died of their injuries, exposure and thirst. Some, who were affected by drinking seawater, jumped overboard and were taken by sharks.

"A lot of blokes went crazy by drinking seawater," said Mr Bromilow, who did not drink any water until the fourth day.

Mr Bromilow, who was married the day before the Yarra sailed for duties in the Persian Gulf in 1940, was the only wounded man to survive the ordeal. Once aboard the submarine, the 24-year-old was laid on his stomach in sick bay, but the crew was soon forced to pour cologne around Mr Bromilow, because of the smell of his infected wounds.

The surviving Yarra crew were taken to Colombo in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and then returned to Australia, where Mr Bromilow spent several months in hospital.

He tried to rejoin the navy but was rejected on medical grounds.

Ms Hirchfield said it was important to document the story of the Yarra, especially as Mr Bromilow was one of only two survivors.

"People are hungry for history and once you are gone, that history and knowledge is gone with you," Ms Hirchfield said. "I say, 'Dad, you didn't survive this for no reason, there has to be a reason and that's to tell people war is not a good thing'."